


in me are the bones of a better man

by musicspeakstoo



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 18:42:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12041925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicspeakstoo/pseuds/musicspeakstoo
Summary: Bucky Barnes starts hanging out with Clint Barton. It's both a total disaster and actually kind of a good idea.





	in me are the bones of a better man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



> For the wonderful geckoholic. I tried to fit in a bunch of the stuff you liked, but unfortunately I think this turned out fluffier than your preferences. Still, I hope you like it anyway! There's something (/a combination of someones) that we talked about on twitter that I hope will make you smile.
> 
> There's a bunch of people who show up in here, because I love ensemble fic, but aren't tagged because they're really only brief cameos. Also, the Steve/Bucky mentioned is really only in passing.
> 
> Title is from one of Tyler Knott Gregson's typewriter poems.

The thing about him and Clint is that they’re almost too similar. The sharpshooting ability, wisecracking humor hiding the cynical bastard below, determination to do right by their families, the people they care about — hell they’re even built the same. And, well, then there’s Natalia. Point is, is that they’re similar enough for it to be a problem and maybe there would’ve been some sort of juvenile but vitriolic rivalry between them had circumstances not convened into a single moment that diverted them from that path.

It sounds more dramatic than it actually was when you put it like that, though. All that had happened was that SHIELD tecs had taken his metal arm off in order to run some tests, leaving him sitting on a lab table feeling a little on edge.

Then, Clint had walked in. 

James had bristled, preparing for, well not the _worst_ , but definitely something unpleasant but Clint had only given him a cursory nod in response. Another SHIELD tec walked up to greet him and sat him on another lab table, positioning him directly across from James. She pulls a cart with her, says something to Clint that’s drowned out by a brief bit of sound from the guys with his arm, and then waits for...something. James isn’t sure what but he’s a little annoyed, because he had been sat down and barely given warning before his arm was taken off.

Then again, when the tec does move, she pulls two little things out of Clint’s ears. They’re the same color as his skin, James doubts he’d ever notice them if they hadn’t been removed right in front of him. Hearing aids. Huh. Nothing in Clint’s file had mentioned that and James wonders if it was omitted or just omitted from him. 

James watches as Clint tracks the tech’s movements as she wheels the cart away from him. He supposes that that may be why the tec waited. James without his arm is a little more hindered than Clint must be without his hearing aids and a pissed off (scared shitless) sharpshooter is not someone to mess around with. She must’ve been waiting for him to gather himself. As James is familiar with, sudden loss of a sense is very disorienting.

Clint turns back around and it’s as if he’s noticing James for the first time. They stare at each other for a moment before Clint offers a “what can you do?” gesture and James lets out a startled laugh.

~~~

The boomerang arrow saves his life on a bridge in Germany so everyone who shits on them can fuck right off, in James’s opinion.

~~

James has no idea how he gets in or out, but Lucky has somehow found a way to get into James’s apartment and likes to cuddle up with him and Steve on nights where Clint is elsewhere.

Steve suggests getting a support animal but instead they end up with a mangy cat they found behind a dumpster and named after Dum-Dum (who would’ve gotten a kick out of it) and whose list of people he liked was limited to James and Steve and no one else. Well, except Lucky.

~~

He’s not sure if Clint and Kate are together or not, though he knows everything thinks they’re at least fucking. They call each other “bossman” and “bosslady” and Kate knows literally every corner of Clint’s apartment and Clint’s laundry sometimes has purple lacy bits in it but that’s not definitive. 

Not when they’ve both got exes that they see and work with on a regular basis. Definitely not when Natalia has an arrow charm around her neck, inside jokes with Clint that are very much “you had to be there” moments and it’s hard to tell when you consider how she grins at Kate when Kate says “that’s hot” about her during training.

James doesn’t know and he honestly doesn’t really care. What annoys him is how much everyone else does.

Bruce wrings his hands and mutters something like 

_Inappropriate_

Hill and Coulson roll their eyes and snort

_Clearly someone has never read the rules about fraternization_

Tony sneers something about

_Patterns_

and really that last one is the only one that gets him. Because if Clint had tried something on Natasha he wouldn’t still be alive and the fact that only him, Steve, and Natalia herself know that infuriates him beyond all reason.

Especially since Kate used to be squirrely around him in all the ways she should be to cover up the cautious way she looked at him whenever they were alone together. They’ve gotten past that but the knowledge that everyone knows about Kate in some capacity or another and still thinks Clint’s that type of guy, well.

At least with him and Natalia all the Red Room was worried about was weakness.

~~

One day when James is too restless to stay in his or anyone’s apartment but is afraid of what would happen if he tried training, Kate and Clint pack him up and take him to museums all over Brooklyn. Some of it he knows, remembers, and adds anecdotal information that they soak up like a sponge.

It’s nice, knowing that the memories in his head are good for more than giving him nightmares or for intel that SHIELD can use.

~~

His wardrobe gets more purple in it as time goes on. It’s a surprisingly good color on him.

~~

That Clint is pretty fucked up is something James is aware of, objectively. But one day he walks into Clint’s apartment and there’s glass all over the floor, Clint isn’t wearing his hearing aids, and his hands are bleeding as he shoots arrow after arrow into the target like something terrible will happen if he doesn’t.

James doesn’t know what to do, is barely capable of handling his own shit, so he quietly backs out of the apartment and closes the door.

It’s nearly a year later when he first hears about Barney Barton.

~

James had known that the superhero community wasn’t exactly large, but then again he also hadn’t expected Clint to _know_ so many of them.

Besides his former lovers, not all of whom are female which was a welcome relief, Clint basically lives by an entirely metaphorical open-door policy.

There’s Matt, the vigilante/lawyer who eats Clint’s takeout while they talk about some of Matt’s clients moving into Clint’s building to get away from slumlords or complain about the alarming regularity in which they end up falling into dumpsters. With Matt comes the deceptively strong couple (he thinks the man’s name is Luke, no clue on the woman) who mostly make fun of Matt and Clint. When the woman comes by herself, she and Clint drink beer and quite possibly exchange gossip. He’s never entirely sure.

Wade scares the shit out of him the night they meet, a nearly impossible feat, but James still couldn’t tell you if that was the basis for what turns into Wednesday night video games with the two of them, Kate, and Clint. Sometimes the kid with the spider powers comes and sometimes James remembers to call him Peter. Sometimes the _other_ kid with the spider powers comes and James usually remembers to call him Miles.

Kate’s team, the one with the alien and the magic guy and the fast guy who are twins but not and the other people James knows but doesn’t are around a lot too. All of them tend to look at Kate and Clint weird when they call each other “Hawkeye.” They all have snacks stashed in Clint’s various cupboards, though.

Upon reflection, James decides that people like Clint _because_ he’s generally a mess. It takes the pressure off. Also, he really can’t stop _helping_ people despite aforementioned mess and also a history that would give him a thousand reasons not to. Clint’s not very good with people, but he’s got four walls and zero room to judge, so if you need a space to get yourself together, he’s your guy.

James can personally attest to that.

~~

Clint’s bad days generally outnumber his good days but the most common are his okay days. James is still mostly made up of bad days but his good days are becoming better days so he’s going to take a page out of Clint’s book and consider that progress.

~~

James doesn’t mean to move into Clint’s apartment building. Really, he doesn’t. In fact, when he’d heard that Clint owned a whole building, he’d scoffed and wondered if he was the only person on the team who wasn’t rich.

Turns out that one, he is rich (something something investments something something paperwork error something something) and two, Clint’s building is a seen-better-days apartment building in Bed-Stuy (one thing Bucky really loves about New York now is all the nicknames and acronyms) that he only bought so the Russian mob wouldn’t evict everyone. 

He’d been hanging around Clint’s apartment a lot, is what happened. No one wanted him living alone, he couldn’t take living with Steve, and Tony wouldn’t have him. He was a little low on options, essentially. But even then, he wouldn’t ask that of Clint.

Kate was the one who suggested it, actually.

“Since you’re hanging around here so much, you might as well move in,” she had said while sitting on the couch painting her nails while they watched TV.

A side effect of spending time with the Hawkeyes was an addiction to _Dog Cops_. James had even found episodes on Natalia’s DVR.

“Uh, there’s only one bedroom in this place,” Clint had replied.

“Yeah, and this couch doesn’t fold out,” James added, because it didn’t. Also because it’s usually occupied by Kate.

Kate huffed and rolled her eyes like she did when she thought they were being particularly stupid. It’s possible she learned it from Natasha. Or Jessica. Or Bobbi.

“I meant in the building, dummies.”

“Oh,” Clint blinks, “well, we do have a few empty apartments a couple floors below us.”

James has no real good reason to say no, so he doesn’t. He moves in a week later, already knowing most of the tenants, though Simone invites him to a welcome dinner anyway. When he has nightmares and can’t or won’t go back to sleep, he lies in bed and goes over everyone’s name and occupation in his head. He learns that though Clint is nine kinds of a disaster on a good day, he’s a pretty decent landlord and the whole building really likes him, their “hawkguy.”

~~

The rooftop barbecues are quietly amazing, something that James’s general knowledge of the modern world told him didn’t happen anymore. That they were gone in the age where everyone had a screen and no one thought it was safe to let your kids play in the streets. 

But he’s sitting on a rooftop holding a hot dog watching Kate and Natalia chat with one of the women who lives on the ground floor, Steve is by the grill listening to the guy manning it tell the story of Clint helping him clear out his dad’s basement in Jersey — “in the middle of a fucking hurricane no less” — while Clint teaches a bunch of wide-eyed kids how to break a glass bottle with a quarter and thinks that maybe Brooklyn hasn’t changed in all the ways that matter.


End file.
